Well, I now have all my through mortises chopped. Thankfully, that will probably be one of the last times I will have to chop a mortise on floppy sawhorses. I will soon have a bench instead. Not too bad though. About 2 hours to do the 8 through mortises. So about 15 min each one. This included marking and a lot of fiddling and repositioning the sawhorses.

I tried several techniques. I tried some with just a chisel and mallet chopping style. That was fine as long as I was only going about 1 in deep. For the full depth, I went hybrid. I went around the margin of the mortise with the plunge blade on the multi-tool, and then split out the waste. Flip and repeat working from both faces toward the middle. Worked very nicely. Once I went around the mortise with the multi-tool, I was able to hog out 1/4 to 3/8 inch wedges with the chisel. Went in bevel down and chopped 2/3 of the mortise from one direction and then turned around and went towards the other end. I did one test with brace and bit but the augers I have don’t grab well enough in the cedar 4×4 to mess with. They have the fine screws for hardwood.

Next will be cutting the tenons for the crossbeams. The end is near. I have to get busy as my other projects are piling up though. Oh well.